March 31 2021 

As far as I was aware we were a regular family of 6 who were leading a charmed life in Switzerland. No major life traumas or bereavements, basically a pretty blessed life. But then, at 19:00 in the car on the way to hip hop, my then 16 year old daughter, Isla, broke down and told me she had been self harming and purging and needed help. My world as I knew it stopped on that day and has never come back, although now, 19 months later, I have begun to see how our world has expanded and improved in many ways because of the horrific journey we have all, as a family, been on.

I phoned the psychiatric children’s helpline and was told there was a 9 month waiting list (I know not much compared to the UK) but they referred her to a therapist and I made her a doctor's appointment. The next 4 months were full of tears, anguish, shouting, worry and a change in lifestyle which I resented. I was exhausted, I was confused, I was resentful of this anorexia predator entering into our household. Why hadn’t I noticed my daughter had lost so much weight? What had I done wrong? At this stage I hadn’t even thought about mental health illness. Our lives existed as a blur around the meal table. Isla wasn't getting worse but also not better. We were at an impasse and I felt very out of control.

July 2021 

Thinking life could get no worse I was about to realise that it could, indeed, get much, much worse. My younger daughter Pippa, then 15, finished school and stopped eating. Queue even more fighting (Pippa fights back, Isla doesn’t), tears, no sleep and a rapidly rising level of anxiety I was not coping with. The summer holidays arrived and the events of these holidays leave me scarred forever. I can't really describe in words the feelings of pure terror that each day brought.  By the end of August I had 2 daughters who were very very sick. At this point we were only aware of the anorexia which Isla was diagnosed with and which Pippa refused to acknowledge she had. 

August 2021 

Pippa came back from her apprenticeship one day distraught. Someone had mentioned she needed “fattening up” and she could not cope with the embarrassment of being noticed. She screamed, cried and wouldn’t stop. What followed was 3 days of refusing all food and drink, uncontrollable rage and threatening suicide. I wrote to and rang every therapist, psychiatrist, children’s unit I could find. Eventually 1 doctor (Head of Adolescent Psychiatry at our local hospital) contacted me and said “bring her to emergency”. I will be forever thankful to this man. I took her to emergency, she was admitted and on the first night she nearly went into heart failure.

So I started the routine of hospital visits every day as well as still caring for Isla (who by this point was refusing food and drink), my boys (I also have 2 sons), my dog, my husband (well actually I left him to fend for himself!) and work full time. I was rapidly losing my mind and couldn't sleep so I went to the doctor and asked for therapy and medication. I was put on antidepressants, sleeping pills and monthly therapy. 

2 weeks after Pippa was admitted to emergency the same lovely Dr told me to take Isla but we had to go to a different hospital as they couldn’t have sisters in the same ward with anorexia (it's a competitive disease). So I drove 50 minutes away to another emergency and Isla was admitted. So again the new routine started - hospital visits every day, one being 50 minutes away, as well as our ‘usual’ life. My husband and I did alternate days so the girls had either one of us each day. Exhaustion, despair and disbelief were my companions everyday. My colleagues said I looked haunted. 

September 2021

Pippa was admitted from hospital to a clinic. 2 weeks later Isla was too (still 50 minutes away). This brought hope and respite from the daily hospital visits as we could only visit the clinics twice a week. I started to feel energy coming back, was hopeful, saw my girls putting on weight and getting colour back. Little did I know that we were in for so much more. 

I remember the first time I had a phone call from Pippa's clinic telling me she had “slit her wrists”. Panic. Horror that maybe there was more going on than “just” the anorexia. My husband broke down. I shut off my emotions. Then Isla’s clinic phoned, she had self harmed and needed stitches. This went on and on for months, if it wasn’t Pippa's clinic phoning then it was Isla’s, always with horrible news. One day I turned up at Pippa's clinic for family therapy. Pippa walked into the room and the black look of nothingness in her eyes completely broke me. 

My girls were in a very bad place. Pippa stopped talking, Isla blamed me for everything. Family therapy (which my husband and I attended in each clinic once a week) was brutal. I was completely and utterly destroyed. When I look back now on those days I realise how broken I was, just functioning on autopilot, trying to look after my boys, trying to do my job, trying to attend every appointment, trying to hold on.

I remember the evening I reached out on Parenting Mental Health. I was doubtful that PMH was the right support group for me, still in denial that I was a parent of children who had mental health illnesses. However, I joined and I was accepted. Pippa was supposed to come home that day for 2 hours. She had managed to get in the car but on the way started crying. She couldn’t get out of the car and pleaded to be taken back to the clinic. I was heartbroken and the tears finally flowed. I couldn’t stop. Why couldn't my daughter enter our home? Our home was supposed to be their safe place, our family place of love and warmth but she was too traumatised to enter it. Why? What had I done? What had happened? I was in so much despair, my thoughts were spiralling to a point of suicidal ideation, I couldn’t stop crying, I drank too much. PMH heard me, spoke to me, managed to get me to calm down, showed me the small win of the fact that Pippa got in the car. (Whoever that was I am eternally grateful to - it was the beginning of seeing things differently). I eventually went to bed with a cup of tea and woke up with a new life line and an understanding of how to celebrate the little wins. 

Christmas 2021 

Soul destroying. Both Isla and Pippa ended up in separate high security psychiatric wards against their will due to suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts and severe self harm. Christmas Eve was spent receiving phone calls from both girls in hysterics telling me to come and get them. I thought my heart would shatter. We tried to celebrate Christmas as much as possible for the sake of the boys but it mainly involved trips to the psychiatric clinics. I will never forget the image of my daughter Pippa asleep on a mattress on the floor of her isolation room - a concrete room with nothing in it except a mattress and a camera. It broke my heart. 

2022

The events of Christmas Eve seemed to be a turning point. 

Isla went back to her clinic and finished the programme and came home mid January 2022 with diagnoses of anorexia, depression, anxiety, ADHD and mild BPD. She was put on Ritalin, Sertraline and Zyprexa and had outpatient therapy, a nutritionist and weekly doctor appointments. In the beginning she struggled and the demands on me were huge (I couldn't leave her alone, even for 1 minute) but she slowly started laughing again, singing songs in the car, going out with friends, going to school and doing normal teenage things like smoking and drinking vodka! 

I slowly learnt (through PMH and family therapy) to listen to her, be present, acknowledge her feelings, to ask her what she needed, not to assume things, not to try to fix and to let go of my life as I once knew it. I also learnt to celebrate the small joys such as my peaceful cup of coffee at 06:00 every morning whilst I cuddled my dogs (yes in amongst the chaos of our lives I decided to get another puppy!) and to quietly celebrate the small wins such as hearing Isla singing Halsey songs at the top of her voice as I drove her to Hip Hop.